Member Info for WiseAfterTheFact

Ah yes, he should apologise for being under the misapprehension that Trump has any interest in bringing about peace, when really he's only interest is in plundering Ukraine for its minerals. Easy mistake to make, but thankfully no-one will make such a mistake again with Trump again.

Apology for what??

@Sergio20 - "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.” Usually attributed in fact to Oscar Benavides, a former Peruvian president, albeit of similar politics to Mussolini. Very applicable to Trump.

@JohnNth - "Z have nothing positive to show for his term as president" - oh, apart from uniting and motivating his country, and the international community to successfully face down an aggressor with one of the largest armies for three years. More than Trump or fellow scum-b@g Vance would achieve together in a hundred lifetimes.

@popopo8 - that indeed now seems likely, absent a resounding and immediate response from Europe. Putin's first objective achieved, courtesy of Trump. The rest will inevitably follow within a year or less: Ukraine returns to the Russian kleptosphere.

@JohnSilk - seems even you are losing your thread. Of course no-one's ever seen anything quite as awful in America - very publicly bullying an ally for the benefit of an enemy? Gambling with global security in a "high stakes game of poker" instead of serious quiet diplomacy with allies first? You say it all yourself. No more backroom trading - at least with Ukraine and the US. Now it's down to Europe. We can and will go it alone. And scruu America.

"Disrespected" the US because he did not grovel to his Lordship and dared to correct his several factually incorrect statements? Pure pre-meditated bullying. Absolutely inexcusable. And fortunately, there forever for the world to see. Trump just destroyed any credibility he may have had. Shame on you for even now finding reasons to excuse hum.

Come on OSG and JohnSilk, tell us you can watch that footage of Trump and Vance behaving like Mafia thugs and believe this is the right way to deal with the problem. Shame on you.

Thanks, @OSG. You're doing a tremendous job for the Kremlin's information ministry.

@Sergio - thank you for that, very useful. Have to say, having read that, I feel somewhat more reassured rather than less. Though clearly there are real risks here.

LoL. Even the Guardian is struggling to find a single positive thing to say about the Trump-Starmer meeting. "Security guarantees"? Yeah, maybe for a visit of the Tangerine Toddler to Balmoral (London not so much...)

@JohnSilk - I've read everything you've written for quite some time, but I'm certainly not going to waste my time challenging every one of the Putin/Trump propaganda lines you've come out with. Readers can indeed go back and see for themselves. As for "symbiotic relationship with Russia" - symbiosis is by definition a mutually beneficial relationship: in what sense do you think western democracies should serve to benefit Putin's tyranny?

@OSG and @JohnSilk (putting this here in the right thread) - seriously, do you really believe this guff? How many Americans were there in Ukraine prior to Russia's invasion? (To say nothing of the US army contingent, which certainly won't be there this time). Do you think Putin - who has just killed about 250,000 of his own people - would care about a few US miners? You're either chronically credulous or a shameless Trump/Putin shill.

@JohnSilk - seriously, do you really believe this guff? How many Americans were there in Ukraine prior to Russia's invasion? (To say nothing of the US army contingent, which certainly won't be there this time). Do you think Putin - who has just killed about 250,000 of his own people - would care about a few US miners? You're either chronically credulous or a shameless Trump/Putin shill.

Sounds like it wouldn't be the worst solution - but would NATO rules apply?

@JohnSilk - calling the BBC 'Sickle and Hammer HQ', and now quoting TASS. We get the picture...

@JohnSilk - listening to John Bolton on R4, saying Starmer should probably not even mention security guarantees (should concentrate on massaging Trump's ego) and that he stands "no chance at all" of getting such guarantees anyway.

@JohnSilk - what you've missed is 'credible security guarantees' - the most important factor of all (at least as far as Ukraine is concerned). Zelensky could not have put it more clearly that no deals get done (not even the US minerals deal) without such guarantees. Trump isn't offering any - yet, at least. Starmer, Macron and Merz (sort of) might have the right intentions, but it is still a long way short of credible (and still lacking what they in turn have said - US backstop needed which, to repeat, isn't being offered). So it's all down to Trump - and not in terms of him exercising his narcissism or his phone-dialling finger - but in terms of planes in the air and missiles at the ready. Hard to see he'll ever get there, given it means pointing these at his friend and mentor, Putin.

@Johnsilk - No, of course not, but the point is that Trump stated that Putin would accept European peacekeepers. Russia now says no-one ever asked them.

@Solaris - exactly, that's what I've been hinting at as a risk here. But actually this whole fund thing (or at least what we know of it so far) makes little sense, because as described it's just a typical Sovereign Wealth Fund, and that does not explain how Trump gets his pound of flesh from it (or the assets which are contributing to it). There could be a nasty little devil in the detail of this... (sorry, posted to wrong thread before...)